Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, April 13, 2010

We're driving as fast as we dare across the temporarily dry seabed, with one eye on the tide chart and the other on our watches, anxious to reach the far shore before the ocean surges back in and submerges us.

No need, though, to check the rearview mirror to see if the pharaoh's chariots are gaining on us: This is just the normal way of getting to and from Minister's Island between the world-record tides of New Brunswick's Bay of Fundy.

Wedged between Maine and Nova Scotia, and overshadowed by both, New Brunswick's surprisingly untrammeled Fundy coast has been hailed as "like Cape Cod 50 years ago" and "Maine without the crowds." It certainly claims its share of Kodak-perfect covered bridges, white-steepled churches, bracing fall foliage and red, succulent lobsters nearly the size of beagles. Tourism here is in that fresh, just-ripened state where there's a solid infrastructure of country inns and good restaurants in place, but the masses have yet to descend upon it.

And twice a day it puts on one of planet Earth's grandest spectacles: 100 billion tons of water - as much as the flow of all the world's rivers combined - floods into the bay, producing tides as high as a five-story building, causing mighty rivers to flow backward and even depressing the Earth's crust in places.

Credit it to the unique size, orientation and funnel shape of the 170-mile-long bay, which causes each draining tide to smack head-first into the next incoming tide, pushing the water to heights unknown anywhere else. (Well, almost anywhere else: Ungava Bay, near Baffin Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, boasts average tides just 8.4 inches lower than Fundy's, which the Canadian Hydrographic Service, after years of wearisome debate, finally declared a "statistical tie.")

Not your average tides

Watching the tide go in and out might sound like something to put off until you've mastered the art of watching paint dry. But these aren't just any tides.

Take, for instance, Reversing Falls. At Saint John, the largest city along New Brunswick's Fundy coast, the incoming tide pushes back on the Saint John River until it reverses course and flows upstream, turning what's normally a short waterfall into a colossal set of cascades frothing in the opposite direction. At Fallsview Park, across from an old pulp mill, we watched daredevil kayakers dipping and flipping in the turbulent whitewater. In summer, local outfitters will take you on a soaking-wet jet boat ride through the cascades.

This, by the way, isn't some glorified creek. At 410 miles, the Saint John is the second-longest river east of the Mississippi; it's sometimes called the Rhine of North America. But twice a day Fundy's otherworldly power pushes all that water 80 miles back upstream.

Now that's a tide.

Up the coast, at Hopewell Rocks, we scampered on the puddled seabed among bizarre, mushroom-shaped sandstone formations 35 feet high, while a ranger stood nearby checking his watch. At the top of the stairs leading down to the shore we'd passed a clock and a sign that warned, in English and French: "DANGER. To avoid being trapped by the rising tide YOU MUST return to the stairs by the time shown here." The time indicated was 11:20 a.m.

At 11:10 a.m., the ranger - apparently stationed there for people who refuse to follow directions bilingually - began herding us off the ocean floor and up onto the stairs. From a dry vantage point I could see a 2-foot-high cairn I'd built covered by the rapidly rising tide in what seemed like seconds.

Moments later, the water was lapping at the first landing and we all had to hustle further up the stairs. Using the rock formations as yardsticks, I could watch the sea level climbing inexorably up their sides - a foot every minute or two. The effect was of watching the rock towers sink beneath the surface, Atlantis-like, until only the very tips poked out of the sea.

Cradled boats

The tide informs every aspect of daily life here. At the handsome, pocket-size port of St. Martins - a onetime shipbuilding village where, incidentally, photographers can get two covered bridges in the same frame - we saw lobster and scallop boats resting in cradles on the seabed, waiting for the tide to return. Occasionally, along the coast, we'd see idle boats at low tide simply lying on their sides on the ocean floor: Either the owner didn't get them into cradles in time, or didn't bother.

On Grand Manan Island, where John James Audubon used to come to paint the birds, local residents wait for the tide to go out before grabbing metal pails and embarking on two of the island's economic mainstays: "winkling" and "dulsing:" gathering periwinkle snails and dulse seaweed. The former is often used for what is known locally as "Fundy escargot"; the latter is eaten all sorts of ways - pan fried, baked with cheese and added to everything from chowder to pizza dough.

At Roland's Sea Vegetables, where a sign on the doors said "This is an ORDER: Go in and serve yourself if no one is here," I did as instructed. I can report that dulse tastes remarkably like, well ... seaweed. It's an acquired taste, I guess.

Hidden waterfalls

Back on the mainland, we spent half a day slowly traversing the new Fundy Trail Parkway, which begins near St. Martins and meanders for 11 cliff-top miles through some of the last coastal wilderness between Labrador and Florida. From the road, adjacent hiking and biking trails amble down to hidden waterfalls and otherwise pristine beaches marred only by moose tracks.

In the fall, this is one of the region's best venues for fall foliage. When we visited in October, the road was lined with the standard sugar maples in their Technicolor hues of searing vermilion and fiery orange. But the hardwood forest was also a crazy-quilt of electric-yellow striped maples, saffron-hued mountain maples, and an assortment of tangerine-tinted elms and oaks, all punctuated with the blazing red berries of mountain ash and elderberry trees. (Leaf peepers take note: The road shuts down each year on Oct. 12, as the last fall colors begin to fade.)

Pulling off the road at the frequent turnouts, we could gaze across the Bay of Fundy to the distant coast of Nova Scotia. The sea here at this time of year is often churning with right whales, so named by early New England whalers because they were the "right" ones to hunt: They often stayed close to shore, and when killed would float. After being hunted nearly to extinction they're making a comeback here.

We didn't see any from the overlook but encountered half a dozen of them, along with breaching humpbacks and a fin whale, during whale-watching tours out of and Grand Manan Island St. Andrews.

Just over the border from Maine, the handsome little seaport of St. Andrews began life as a haven for British loyalists fleeing the colonies as the tide turned against them in the Revolutionary War. Some of their homes, floated up the coast on barges, still stand.

Today the village is a beguiling blend of turn-of-the-last-century seaside resort - epitomized by the striking, Tudor-style Fairmont Algonquin - and working fishing village, where lobster boats and salmon tenders chug out each morning into misty Passamaquoddy Bay, an inlet from the Bay of Fundy.

Water Street, where the shingle and clapboard storefronts are largely unchanged from the 1800s, is lined with galleries and specialty shops, and seems to be custom-designed for puttering and browsing.

But the crowning glory of St. Andrews, in my judgment, is the Rossmount Inn, an elegant, three-story Italianate manor house at the edge of town where chef Chris Aerni blends the always-changing bounty from the nearby sea with favorite dishes from his native Switzerland - at prices that are a third less than you'd expect to pay for such fine dining.

An eye on the time

This was on my mind one afternoon as we toured Minister's Island, the former home of Sir William Van Horne, who built Canada's transcontinental railroad. As we inspected the grand Edwardian mansion, made of sandstone cut from the local shoreline, and then the oceanfront bath house and a barn where the milk cows enjoyed million-dollar views, I kept sneaking glances at my watch.

There's no car ferry service to the island; we'd waited until the tide went out, then driven across the ocean floor to get there. If we dallied too long and the tide swept back in, we'd be castaways, at least until the next tidal change.

I wondered if Moses ever parted a sea because he was late for a dinner reservation.

IF YOU GO

Getting there

Saint John and Moncton are the best gateways for New Brunswick's Fundy Coast; flights connect through Montreal. (To save yourself some potential grief: Take note that there's a town with an almost identical name in maritime Canada, and it's the provincial capital of Newfoundland and Labrador. That one is usually rendered as "St. John's." The one in New Brunswick is usually spelled "Saint John.")

Where to stay

Tidal Watch Inn (formerly the Quaco Inn), 16 Beach St., St. Martins; (888) 833-4772, tidalwatchinn.ca. Rooms from $110 CND ($109.09 USD) A comfy B&B where a tidal clock and tidal charts in the lobby remind guests that the Bay of Fundy's colossal tides practically wash up against the back door.

Treadwell Inn, 129 Water St., St. Andrews, (888) 529-1011, www.townsearch.com/treadwell. Rates from $99 CND ($98.18 USD) per night. Originally the town's customs house, this friendly and stylish inn is right on Water Street, with great views of the fishing harbor.

The Compass Rose, 65 Route 776, Grand Manan Island, (506) 662-8570 (in winter (613) 471-1772), www.compassroseinn.com. Rates from $99 CND ($98.18 USD). Run by a couple from Liverpool, England, this cozy inn is probably the most English B&B we've stayed in this side of the Atlantic.

The best place to view Reversing Falls is at Fallsview Park on the outskirts of Saint John. For tidal times and other information, phone the Reversing Falls Visitor Information Centre, (866) 463-8639. Jet boat tours run from June 5 to Oct. 3 in 2010; cost is $37 CND ($36.69 USD) for adults. (888) 634-8987, www.jetboatrides.com.

Hopewell Rocks is along Route 114 at Hopewell Cape, half an hour from Moncton. (877) 734-3429, www.thehopewellrocks.ca. Park open late May through mid-October; adults, $8.50 CND ($8.43 USD).

To get to Minister's Island from St. Andrews, follow Bar Road until it runs into Passamaquoddy Bay. If the tide is out, continue across the seabed to the island. If the tide is in, there's often a tiny passenger ferry. Open mid-May through mid-October. Adults, $15 CND (14.88 USD). www.ministersisland.ca.